About this book

Introduction

This book provides a broad overview of the entire field of DNA computation, tracing its history and development. It contains detailed descriptions of all major theoretical models and experimental results to date, which are lacking in existing texts, and discusses potential future developments. This book will provide a useful reference source for researchers and students, as well as an accessible introduction for people new to the field.

The field of DNA computation has flourished since the publication of Adleman's seminal article, in which he demonstrated for the first time how a computation may be performed at a molecular level by performing standard operations on a tube of DNA strands. Since Adleman's original experiment, interest in DNA computing has increased dramatically. This monograph provides a detailed survey of the field, before describing recent theoretical and experimental developments. It concludes by outlining the challenges faced by researchers in the field and suggests possible future directions.